Among the most obvious and durable monuments to the colonial age in Asia are the great engineering projects which have permanently transformed the physical and economic geography of the continent. Many of these have an interesting history of their own, both in the political and commercial history of the country building them and on the level of international politics. This is true not only for such successfully completed projects as the Suez Canal or the Trans-Siberian Railway, but also for great schemes which were never realized. In Southeast Asia the long-discussed Kra Canal is the most famous instance of the latter, but it is not unique. Throughout most of the second half of the Nineteenth Century the British Government and especially the British business community dallied with the idea of a rail link between the Bay of Bengal and the interior provinces of China. Those familiar with the building of the Burma Road will understand the enormous engineering problems involved in such a plan. But for most of the Nineteenth Century geographic knowledge of Southeast Asia was extremely vague and the lure of a several thousand mile shortcut to the perennially fascinating markets of China exerted a strong pull on the imagination of a commercial nation. Ultimately, international political complications and sound economic logic killed ven the idea of such a railway. But the light it throws on government — business relations within the British Empire and on imperial rivalries in Southeast Asia makes the story of the first Burma Road, the one that was never built, well worth the telling.

There was a stone fort at Malacca from 1512 to 1807. Only twice during the three centuries of its existence did this fort change hands, and it was taken by storm only once. Yet it was many times besieged, and nations which did not possess it regarded it with disfavour as a threat to the security of their communications and a hindrance, if not a barrier, to the freedom of their trade. In relation to the Malay Peninsula the fort at Malacca was of small account, for it was never used as a base for the furthering of territorial ambitions in the interior. Its importance lay rather in its. position on the flank of the main sea route between India and China. Beneath its guns fleets could be assembled and lie at anchor in security, and these fleets could be, and were, employed to attack the shipping of rival powers passing through Malacca Straits.

In a previous study published in 1934 I have given an account of the first Portuguese mission to Peking. Certain sources which were not available to me have since been examined, and consequently it has become possible to amplify my narrative and to revise some of my views tentatively given before.

When the history of Chinese social institutions in Malaya comes to be written it will, I suspect, be especially difficult to construct a picture of the life associated with the domestic family and ties based upon common descent and marriage. The sources of material on these matters are likely to be very limited, at least in regard to the nineteenth century. Yet, as a social anthropologist I shall draw attention to a number of facts drawn from published material on nineteenth-century Singapore, hoping to show that there are some interesting problems in the analysis of the Chinese kinship institutions of the period and that, however hard it may be to come by the data, a worthwhile task awaits the historian with some sociological insight.

“[Your committee] are not aware that anything material has been omitted that could have conduced to the welfare of the Association, or the trade of India and China generally…They have not failed to maintain their communications with the different Presidencies in India and the Chambers of Commerce at Canton and Singapore.”

The role of Indian textiles in Southeast Asian trade in the seventeenth century was important in three ways. First, there was a great, almost unlimited, demand for these goods in all the Southeast Asian markets; second, they constituted the principal medium of exchange for the trade of Southeast Asia with the outside world; and third, they shaped the pattern of Inter-Asian trade of the European Companies, which laid the foundation of their wealth and commerce and later political power in the eighteenth century. The first two were important for Southeast Asian history only, but the last was of very great importance from the point of view of world history, not less important, in its far-reaching effects, than the voyages of discovery at the beginning of the modern period or the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution in the eighteenth century. The poor Indian weavers shaped the course of world history by unconsciously laying the foundation of British and Dutch colonial empires.

Though the appellation “Châu-B'an” designates particularly the dynasty archives viewed or critized by emperors personnally with minium ink, the Châu-B'an of the Nguyên has traditionally included “T'âu-B'an” (report),: Tnu'o'ng-Du” (decree), “Chi'ên-Ch'i” (edict), as well as other documents connected with official matters.